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May-Day and Other Pieces By: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) |
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MAY DAY AND OTHER PIECES
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
CONTENTS. MAY DAY. THE ADIRONDACS. OCCASIONAL AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. BRAHMA NEMESIS FATE FREEDOM ODE SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, JULY 4, 1857 BOSTON HYMN VOLUNTARIES LOVE AND THOUGHT LOVER'S PETITION UNA LETTERS RUBIES MERLIN'S SONG THE TEST SOLUTION NATURE AND LIFE. NATURE THE ROMANY GIRL DAYS THE CHARTIST'S COMPLAINT MY GARDEN THE TITMOUSE SEA SHORE SONG OF NATURE TWO RIVERS WALDEINSAMKEIT TERMINUS THE PAST THE LAST FAREWELL IN MEMORIAM ELEMENTS. EXPERIENCE COMPENSATION POLITICS HEROISM CHARACTER CULTURE FRIENDSHIP BEAUTY MANNERS ART SPIRITUAL LAWS UNITY WORSHIP QUATRAINS. TRANSLATIONS.
MAY DAY.
Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Maketh all things softly smile,
Painteth pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
Girls are peeling the sweet willow,
Poplar white, and Gilead tree,
And troops of boys
Shouting with whoop and hilloa,
And hip, hip three times three.
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or clapping of shepherd's hands,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 't was the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even unto May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay? or hark,
Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token
That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things. Beneath the calm, within the light,
A hid unruly appetite
Of swifter life, a surer hope,
Strains every sense to larger scope,
Impatient to anticipate
The halting steps of aged Fate.
Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:
When Nature falters, fain would zeal
Grasp the felloes of her wheel,
And grasping give the orbs another whirl.
Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!
And sun this frozen side,
Bring hither back the robin's call,
Bring back the tulip's pride. Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?
The hardy bunting does not chide;
The blackbirds make the maples ring
With social cheer and jubilee;
The redwing flutes his o ka lee ,
The robins know the melting snow;
The sparrow meek, prophetic eyed,
Her nest beside the snow drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves;
And thou, by science all undone,
Why only must thy reason fail
To see the southing of the sun? As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,
So Spring will not, foolish fond,
Mix polar night with tropic glow,
Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,
Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,
But she has the temperance
Of the gods, whereof she is one,
Masks her treasury of heat
Under east winds crossed with sleet.
Plants and birds and humble creatures
Well accept her rule austere;
Titan born, to hardy natures
Cold is genial and dear.
As Southern wrath to Northern right
Is but straw to anthracite;
As in the day of sacrifice,
When heroes piled the pyre,
The dismal Massachusetts ice
Burned more than others' fire,
So Spring guards with surface cold
The garnered heat of ages old:
Hers to sow the seed of bread,
That man and all the kinds be fed;
And, when the sunlight fills the hours,
Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers. The world rolls round, mistrust it not,
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell... Continue reading book >>
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